The most common house name – or certainly the most ubiquitous – in Britain is said to be The Cottage, which perhaps suggests a realistic approach to describing our places of abode. But one of the most coveted house names is surely that of The Old Rectory, which in only three words paints a picture of a very specific way of life.

A substantial family home, with spaciously elegant principal rooms, lofty ceilings, abundant period features, stoutly shuttered windows, sweeping staircases, cellars, stables, outbuildings – The Old Rectory suggests all of this, sitting solidly in the middle of verdant acres of grounds.

Michael de Pelet has been selling such homes for 30 years from the Sherborne office of agent Knight Frank. “The Old Rectory name is always highly sought-after,” he says. “The name tells you exactly what you are going to get – a wonderful classic home, usually sitting on the edge of a village in about 10 acres or so. The perfect family home.”

Rectories are usually more imposing than the more humble vicarage. The rector was entitled to claim all of the parish tithes; a vicar received only a portion of the tithe, with the result that his home was likely to be on a smaller scale. “Also, rectors were often the youngest son of the local lord, the chap with no estate but a bit of cash, so he may well have added a splendid new Georgian front to an older, more modest, house when he joined the church,” says de Pelet. “They wanted to create the impression of a family seat, which is exactly what today’s buyers – usually families decanting from London with a raft of children – are looking for, a modern-day family seat, near good schools, in lovely surroundings.”

Knight Frank’s London office is jointly marketing a prime example in Ingham, Suffolk. The Grade II-listed 1840s Old Rectory comes with all the bells and whistles, from 12 feet-high ceilings, marble fireplaces, moulded architraves and heavy panelled doors in the seven bedrooms and dozen or so living rooms, to a coach house, stables and detached cottage (laid out as two staff apartments), all for an asking price of £1.45 million.

The lovely Georgian Old Rectory in Carleton Rode, Norfolk is similarly equipped with Grade II listing, 10 bedrooms, loose boxes, swimming pool, woodland and paddocks in its six acres; with Jackson-Stopps & Staff at £1.75 million.

Jacksons is also jointly marketing, with Strutt & Parker, the white-rendered, seven-bedroom Old Rectory in the rural hamlet of Coddington, near Chester. Once again Grade II Georgian, with a separate coach house which has planning permission for conversion to a two-bedroom cottage, the house, largely rebuilt in the 1820s, sits in a two-acre plot and is priced at £850,000.

Lastly, a more youthful rectory is the impressive Old Rectory at Aldbury, Hertfordshire, built to an exceptionally high specification just 80 years ago on the one-acre site of a much older property, part of which is retained in the newer building. Oak and stone are used extensively throughout the recently refurbished house, which has a vaulted drawing room with minstrels gallery, six bedrooms, plus a second-floor bedroom suite, a 36ft swimming pool and pool house, as well as an attached self-contained cottage, and is on with Strutt & Parker and Aitchisons at £2.59 million.

Not all former rectories have retained the magical name. The church sold off many of these expensive-to-maintain properties with a covenant stipulating that the new owner could not use the “Rectory” in the address, as this could confuse parishioners. As many churchmen were subsequently rehoused in dull Seventies pebbledash homes, the confusion could only have been in the minds of the church authorities.